Nicotinamide riboside and derivatives thereof, including nicotinate riboside, nicotinamide mononucleotide, and nicotinate mononucleotide, are metabolites of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+). Current work available as state of the art establishes that increasing mammalian cell and tissue NAD+ production can provide a number of health benefits, these include but are not limited to protection from neurodegeneration caused by Alzheimer's disease, resistance of mammals to toxic effects of high fat diets, improvement in mitochondrial densities in animals, improvement in insulin sensitivity and improved exercise endurance. Other work has provided hints at protection from neurotrauma, such as blast injury and noise induced hearing loss by enhancing NAD−. Neurogenesis has also been linked to this effect. NAD+ enhancement by pharmacologic agents mimics the effects of low calorie diets and exercise on physiology, and is a low toxicity method for mimicking the beneficial effects of these health beneficial regimes on human physiology. Moreover, the effect of increased physiologic NAD+ appears to be to increased sirtuin activity, which is responsible for some of the beneficial effects observed for low calorie diets and exercise on human physiology.
While nicotinamide riboside and ester analogs thereof are useful as efficient precursors of NAD+ to elevate levels of NAD+ and thus promote cellular health, the bioavailability of these molecules may not be optimal as pharmacological and nutritional agent. Accordingly, there remains a need in the art for agents that elevate cellular levels of NAD+ that possess suitable bioavailability and stability, and are free from adverse effects on NAD+-dependent biological systems.